


The Interrogation of Dr. Arthur Watts

by TheStudyInRed



Category: RWBY
Genre: Arthur-centric, Interrogation, M/M, Pining Arthur, Post-Volume 7 (RWBY)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:53:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27093115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheStudyInRed/pseuds/TheStudyInRed
Summary: Arthur Watts has to answer for what he's done. Though General Ironwood's questions aren't what he expected, nor his own answers to them.
Relationships: James Ironwood/Arthur Watts
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	The Interrogation of Dr. Arthur Watts

Arthur never cared much for fighting.

He finds it as unproductive as it is banal, to cease to use one’s head and favor instead to roll one’s sleeves to do battle with physicality. A mere contest of brawn, which he knows he’d never win.

His eye socket aches and swells, the ghostly impression of every metal knuckle burns on his cheekbones. The bones of all Arthur’s limbs throb with exertion, his lip swollen and split. His hair sweat out the gel and curls over his forehead, a glimpse of who he’d been as an ambitious young hacker-for-hire in the slums of Mantle. What little reprieve the Brothers grant him comes in the form of the cold wall behind his head, soothing his headache. The cot he sits on is somewhat comfortable, wool.

His rings removed, he no longer senses the current of the room—the electricity in the lights, the door that contains him in the cell, the heating apparatus. There’s a nakedness about their absence. His fingers curl in strange ways without the rings to feel strong. He’s removed his coat too, folded neat at the foot of the cot.

Thunder rumbles, a glimpse of her through the clouds, but though he smiles, his chest constricts with that oh so familiar fear. It’s like a reflex, another physical reality of human interaction that he never cared for either. Whenever the dread witch comes near, Dr. Arthur Watts becomes a fearful man. And he hates every second of it.

A creak interrupts his thoughts, the door to his cell opening. Had she come early? He knows the price of failure among the circle.

His brows lift and the edge of his mouth quirks upward, mustache swiveled between two fingers. “General.”

The scorched arm is in a sling, bandaged and held in place by a metal housing to help the skin grafts Arthur knows are sure to come. He wonders if James intends to cut them from him as payment. Those deep blue eyes hold no light, a true midnight without stars in Atlas. A whiff of bourbon clings to him, as does the brimstone of a broken Seer Grimm.

He steps in and the door swings shut behind him. “I need to ask you why.”

“Which why? Why did I leave Mantle to freeze, Beacon to burn, or—”

“ _No_ , Arthur,” James’ voice is tight and he closes his eyes for a moment with a grimace. “I need to know why you left me.”

His gut twists. Arthur smooths down his waistcoat, preens to stall for time. He looks down at his lap and picks at his cuticles. The ticking of the clock on the wall seems too loud. “Which time?”

“Take your pick.”

He figures it’s best to go with the low-hanging fruit before he dares to climb the branches. “The Paladin Incident was simply that—an incident. I did not plan to leave you then.”

“The rescue effort searched for two weeks with no sign of you.” The lighting makes the shadows beneath James’ eyes, the hollows under his cheeks, even darker, almost skeletal. “We sent in dogs. Heat seeking drones. I almost upended the north tundra looking for you.”

Arthur clears his throat. He opens his mouth, rips up a few different responses, before he settles on, “You searched a week too long. She found me half frozen to death, offered…”

James squints. “Offered what?”

A tight smile reopens the cut on his lip. His fingertips come away red when he touches it. “It doesn’t matter.”

“The hell it does. She took you.”

“And I ruined you.” Arthur has the nerve to meet his gaze, admit to the blinding light with him. He tastes blood. “And in so many ways too. Your body, your mind, and from how you’re disarmed, I suspect your humanity too. I trust you finally learned who your friends are. And aren’t.”

“Yes, I have.” James reaches into his pocket and throws the piece at him. The glass strikes his chest with a dull thud before it falls into his hands, but the tension in James’ voice cuts deeper. “Well played.”

“Do you feel better?” Arthur runs his thumb over the spikes on the queen’s glass crown, the danger of pricking himself all that keeps him in the present. Keeps him from looking at James and the clock reversing. Rewinding.

“What do you think?”

The scientist tilts his head and sighs through his nose. “You can hit me again, if you like.”

James presses his back to the wall, no doubt submerged in the same relief that soothed Arthur’s headache. The general’s face creases and a weak whine of pain rips out of him. A million years ago, Arthur might have gone to him. Brewed a pot of tea and a conversation about something abstract to pick at together like a bread bowl, dunked the scraps into late night hours halfway between friend and lover.

Arthur might have distracted him the best way he knew. Traced the line of James’ jaw, his hands in impolite places, listened to him breathe and fall asleep to his heartbeat, unravel the tin man until all that remained was merely a man. Not the general, not Ironwood, not the headmaster of Atlas Academy, or the military seat of the Atlesian council, just James. Just the James he met as a young man. The man who showed him that there are inconsiderate ways to win and graceful ways to lose.

“I didn’t enjoy it,” He blurts out. “Not one minute, not one second, I didn’t enjoy it.”

“Did you enjoy mocking me?” James’ eyes pin him to the cot, like he had the night before to the floor of Amity coliseum, dragged him over the metal like roadkill.

Arthur straightens with a deep frown. His eyes sting. “The sum total, James. I wish I’d died in that tundra.” He rests his head against the cool tiles again. “At least if you freeze to death, you’re perfectly preserved. Like the ancient Atlesian gods.”

“You’ve been dead to me a long time, Arthur. I don’t know what to do with this…” He inclines his head toward him, “ghost.”

“As I’ve been reliably informed I’m useful.” Arthur’s lips purse. “Use me.”

James wrinkles his nose. “I’m not using you.”

“You can either decide to use me now or come back in later when your military advisors—just Schnee now, I suppose—tell you to. I’m the right hand man. You’d be a great fool not to use me.”

“I’d be a greater fool to believe anything you told me. How do I know you’d tell me the truth? That you’re working with me and not against me? For her?”

Arthur raises the queen to eye-level, a quirk to his cheek that curls his mustache. “Bare king?”

* * *

FIFTEEN YEARS EARLIER

Arthur pushed dark curls out of his eyes as he held the little black king piece. “So a bare king is when…?”

“It’s when he’s the only piece on the board of his color.” James wore a collared shirt under a cable-knit sweater pulled tight over his prototype prosthetics, his growing muscles—once so scrawny and sickly, the sight of him eating more, doing more rejuvenated Arthur with a vengeance. The injuries had taken so much, it only seemed right to have given even more in return. Thick-rimmed black glasses slid down the slope of that proud Ironwood nose as he set up the board. “He’s alone, so it’s almost impossible to win.”

“Almost? I would advise conceding defeat at that point. All alone, no allies, even some turned to villains.” Arthur stretched his legs out over the wall, lain across James’ twin bed in the Atlas Academy dorms. Only two rings on his fingers, pointer and middle squeezing the king’s head. “Just surrender.”

James sat on the edge of the bed with a smile. “Not just yet. You should never admit defeat until checkmate.”

He strained to look at the young Huntsman, “But there’s no hope. What’s the point?”

“There’s always hope. Even in the bleakest of situations, where our mettle is tested the most, that’s when you have to have the _most_ hope.” Those eyes found him again, electrified navy blue. James leaned over onto his side, his elbow by Arthur’s shoulder, to whisper, “Even if you lose, you couldn’t have done any better.”

Arthur looked at him a while, knowing James was trying to reassure him. Even if all their best-laid plans failed, they had each other—neither was alone. Neither was a bare king. He sh0ok his head. “There’s always better, Jamie.”

He hooked a finger in the collar and pulled him down, the chessboard soon forgotten.

* * *

“You honestly think I’m going to trust you ‘for old times’ sake’?” James says in disbelief. “You’re delusional.”

Arthur tuts his tongue and rolls his eyes at him. “Of course not, I’m not sentimental like your faux friends. I think you’re going to trust me because you’re a bare king now. You _are_ all alone. You _are_ without allies, anyone you know you can trust.”

“Which brings me back to my original point—why would I trust you to tell me anything truthful about Salem and her allies? You’re her man.”

“I’m my own man. I’ve been my own man from the beginning.” He straightens, that pride he wouldn’t dare show in front of Salem herself if he wanted to keep the arrangement of his organs. Not out of fear, mind you. “I did as she asked because it was foolish to do otherwise. She had just rescued me from the Paladin Incident when I met her, what wisdom is there to attack or betray her soon after? No. If I wanted to live to get back to this moment, to get back to here—alone with you, with your listening jammers on the rings so she can’t listen in to my conversations—I had to do as she asked as long as was necessary.”

James glares at him, hard. “What are you saying? Did you…?”

“I sabotaged her. At every turn, as often as I could. In little ways. Salem expected a total victory here in Atlas. I disabled the heating grid a week late. If I’d done it earlier, the Grimm would have swept this city and you’d be floating amid the clouds already. Tyrian could have assassinated Robyn Hill weeks ago. I didn’t have to wait until I knew the children and Qrow would be in the city. I did it to make it harder for her.”

“How on Remnant didn’t she catch you?”

“Oh, she knows what I’ve done. She’s countered me. She and I are in a game of chess too. I’ve been a bare king far longer than you have, Jamie.” Arthur grins, his teeth pink. “I already know she can’t be killed. I tried. She caught me and wanted to know why I dared. And I imagine the answer was written all over my face.”

A soft wheeze leaves James as he takes a step closer. His lips part. “This is a lie.”

“What have I to gain by lying to you now? Look around. You’re not keen to release me. And I’m not keen to try to break out with my body like this.”

Black brows furrow as James rubs his mouth, closes his eyes. “People died. You killed them…to have this? With me?”

Arthur shakes his head, his eyes on the general’s mouth. “I am not a good man. I’ve never tried to be you. You gave me everything I could have ever wanted and I tried to do the same in return, but the stars had other plans for our orbits. I didn’t care who I hurt to get back on this trajectory. And I still don’t. We all made sacrifices to be here. I would’ve been at your side forever, if I could.”

“I would’ve been at yours, too.” James covers his face with his metal hand, scrubs it down his skin. “None of it matters now, but I would not have kept you a secret much longer if she hadn’t taken you.”

“Then, out of respect for those dreams and plans, I promise to tell the truth. Because we are both bare kings.” Arthur coughs and a fresh swirl of blood coats his tongue. “And we have no one but each other.”

The general sighs, the lines in his face smoothed. His eyes drift from the scientist to the end of his bed. He comes forward slowly and Arthur moves his coat, draws his legs away.

“Say I believed you,” James holds his sling as he sits with a wince. He turns toward him. “What do we do now?”

The bad doctor leans forward. “We win the game.”


End file.
